Theta movement in Japanese syntax.
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TextDescription: 246 pSubject(s): Language, Linguistics | Language, Modern | 0290 | 0291Dissertation note: Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Maryland College Park, 2000. Summary: This dissertation inquiries into movement and feature checking under the framework of the Minimalist Program.Summary: It is demonstrated that the Spec, TP, as a potential landing site for verb movement, and an uninterruptible [+V] feature enable a verb and affixes to undergo overt successive cyclic raising, thus producing a complex verb by adjunction of affixes to a tense marker as its head (<italic>Multiple Predicate Formation</italic>). MPF has three important effects. One is to make each Spec a narrowly L-related position by inflection of affixes with a verb. A second is to show that the linearity of a complex verb is determined not by syntax but by morphology. Another is to expand the checking domain (locality) within a tensed clause by producing equi distance.Summary: MPF and the Spec, TP parameter ascribe nonobligatory controlled PRO in the subject position of the adjunct with a past perfect particle to check the nominative Case at Spec, TP within the adjunct, where overt verb raising takes place. The long distance A-movement in the control constructions is due to overt verb raising beyond the clause boundary because of the nonfinite embedded clause.Summary: MPF also accounts for the derivation of passives and causatives in Japanese under the assumption that these constructions are derivable only from NP-movement. MPF reduces the derivational difference among <italic>ni</italic> direct passives, <italic> ni</italic> indirect passives, and <italic>ni yotte</italic> direct passives to three types of peculiarities of a passive verb with respect to checking theta roles and Case. The impossibility of scrambling <italic>ni</italic> indirect passives is ascribed to the exhaustion of the theta roles.Summary: The semantic difference of causatives between <italic>o</italic>-causatives and <italic>ni</italic>-causatives, i.e. coerciveness and noncoerciveness, is caused by dative NP's checking Case and theta roles under MPF. The exhaustion of theta roles at TP before passivization is applied makes the passives of noncoercive causatives impossible.Summary: The parametrization of dative markers concerning Case and theta role checking restricts the passivization of double object constructions in Japanese, Korean, and English. Whether the direct and the indirect object NPs can be passivized depends on the dative marker's ability to mark Case and theta roles.
Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 61-04, Section: A, page: 1381.
Director: Norbert Hornstein.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Maryland College Park, 2000.
This dissertation inquiries into movement and feature checking under the framework of the Minimalist Program.
It is demonstrated that the Spec, TP, as a potential landing site for verb movement, and an uninterruptible [+V] feature enable a verb and affixes to undergo overt successive cyclic raising, thus producing a complex verb by adjunction of affixes to a tense marker as its head (<italic>Multiple Predicate Formation</italic>). MPF has three important effects. One is to make each Spec a narrowly L-related position by inflection of affixes with a verb. A second is to show that the linearity of a complex verb is determined not by syntax but by morphology. Another is to expand the checking domain (locality) within a tensed clause by producing equi distance.
MPF and the Spec, TP parameter ascribe nonobligatory controlled PRO in the subject position of the adjunct with a past perfect particle to check the nominative Case at Spec, TP within the adjunct, where overt verb raising takes place. The long distance A-movement in the control constructions is due to overt verb raising beyond the clause boundary because of the nonfinite embedded clause.
MPF also accounts for the derivation of passives and causatives in Japanese under the assumption that these constructions are derivable only from NP-movement. MPF reduces the derivational difference among <italic>ni</italic> direct passives, <italic> ni</italic> indirect passives, and <italic>ni yotte</italic> direct passives to three types of peculiarities of a passive verb with respect to checking theta roles and Case. The impossibility of scrambling <italic>ni</italic> indirect passives is ascribed to the exhaustion of the theta roles.
The semantic difference of causatives between <italic>o</italic>-causatives and <italic>ni</italic>-causatives, i.e. coerciveness and noncoerciveness, is caused by dative NP's checking Case and theta roles under MPF. The exhaustion of theta roles at TP before passivization is applied makes the passives of noncoercive causatives impossible.
The parametrization of dative markers concerning Case and theta role checking restricts the passivization of double object constructions in Japanese, Korean, and English. Whether the direct and the indirect object NPs can be passivized depends on the dative marker's ability to mark Case and theta roles.
School code: 0117.
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